For years the government has been reducing the subsidies for the cultural industry. That resulted in initiatives that focus on finding alternatives ways of financing (art) projects. This is how the crowdfundingplatform Voordekunst was found in 2010. Nowadays Voordekunst is one of world's most successful crowdfundingplatforms with a sucess rate of over 80%. Despite these figures Voordekunst recognises signs of insecurity in the behaviour of the makers that run a campaign on the platform.

This makes the interaction between the projectassistents and the makers more intense in order to answer the questions that the makers get. Here is were my graduation project comes in. Voordekunst would me like to explore the possibilities of providing a service that prevents those questions from emerging. During this project I was under supervision of Voordekunst's digital partner Digital Natives. This case study I will explain the the process and the choices I made.

research

What causes the insecurity for the makers?

During the research phase the goal was to get to know the makers and to clarify the context. To do this I had several customer journey sessions with a viarity of makers with different results from seperate disciplines, to recognise patterns in behaviour and needs. Besides that I had a few sessions with Voordekunst to define the scope and the goal of the project. This resulted in insights which I visualised on these insight cards. Those cards became my design guidelines, which I validated throughout the whole process.

ideation

Exploring the user journeys

To explore as much of the possible solutions we chose to formulate three seperate directions for the concept tackling different needs of the users. So concepts focussing on influencing where, when and how to complete the outdoor activity. To make a decision which concepts suits the user the best we interviewed several users and discussed our insights with the client.

This concept is based on the need of users to start an activity from home. The function will be visible when the user has already decided to go for, for example a run. Beforehand the app gives you a direction to go to based on environmental data.

Based on Runkeeper’s intake, this concept will help users plan their outdoor activities according to their individual schedule. For example, if you have a pollen allergy, this will be kept in mind while planning your outdoor activity.

This concept allows users to have a laid-back attitude towards environmental factors influencing their health and activity. You will receive a route based on your preferences and past runs from other users.

re-define

Who should we design for?

The key moment in the process was the realisation that we should design for an audience that is really affected by the most basal environmental data. Aspects like temperatures, humidity and air pollution do not influence the average people's breathing that much. However for a Asthmatic or anybody with lung issues it could trigger breathing problems. This is how we decided to focus our product on Asthmatic people.